Elsa nodded. “I do my best.”

“I can see that,” Jenny said. “The house looks lovely.”

“You tell Mr. Krueger that stain on the dining-room paper was not my fault. Maybe he had paint on his hand.”

“I didn’t notice a stain last night.”

“I show you.”

There was a smudge on the dining-room paper near the window. Jenny studied it. “For heaven sake, you almost need a microscope to see it.”

Elsa went into the parlor to begin cleaning and Jenny and the girls breakfasted in the kitchen. When they were finished she got out their coloring books and crayons. “Tell you what,” she proposed, “let me have a cup of coffee in peace and then we’ll go out for a walk.”

She wanted to think. Only Erich could have put those cakes of soap on the girls’ pillows. Of course it was perfectly natural that he’d look in on them this morning and there was nothing wrong with the fact that he obviously liked the smell of pine. Shrugging, she finished her coffee and dressed the children in snowsuits.

The day was cold but there was no wind. Erich had told her that winter in Minnesota could range from severe to vicious. “We’re breaking you in easy this year,” he’d said. “It’s just middlin bad.”

At the doorway she hesitated. Erich might want to show them around the stables and barns and introduce her to the help. “Let’s go this way,” she suggested.

She led Tina and Beth around the back of the house and toward the open fields on the east side of the property. They walked on the crunching snow until the house was almost out of sight. Then as they strolled toward the country road that marked the east boundary of the farm, Jenny noticed a fenced-off area and realized they had come upon the family cemetery. A half-dozen granite monuments were visible through the white pickets.

“What’s that, Mommy?” Beth asked.

She opened the gate and they went inside the enclosure. She walked from one to the other of the tombstones, reading the inscriptions. Erich Fritz Krueger, 1843-1913, and Gretchen Krueger, 1847- 1915. They must have been Erich’s great-grandparents. Two little girls: Marthea, 1875-1877, and Amanda, 1878-1890. Erich’s grandparents, Erich Lars and Olga Krueger, both born in 1880. She died in 1941, he in 1948. A baby boy, Erich Hans, who lived eight months in 1911. So much pain, Jenny thought, so much grief. Two little girls lost in one generation, a baby boy in the next one. How do people bear that kind of hurt? At the next monument, Erich John Krueger, 1915-1979. Erich’s father.

There was one grave at the south end of the plot, as separate from the others as it was possible to be. It was the one she realized she had been looking for. The inscription read Caroline Bonardi Krueger, 1924- 1956.

Erich’s father and mother were not buried together. Why? The other monuments were weathered. This one looked as though it had been recently cleaned. Did Erich’s love for his mother extend to taking extraordinary care of her tombstone? Inexplicably Jenny felt a stab of anxiety. She tried to smile. “Come on, you two. I’ll race you across the field.”

Laughing, they ran after her. She let them catch and then pass her, pretending to try to keep up with them. Finally they all stopped breathless. Clearly Beth and Tina were elated to have her with them. Their cheeks were rosy, their eyes sparkled and glowed. Even Beth had lost her perpetually solemn look. Jenny hugged them fiercely.

“Let’s walk as far as that knoll,” she suggested, “then we’ll turn back.”

But when they reached the top of the embankment, Jenny was surprised to see a fair-sized white farmhouse nestled on the other side. She realized it had to be the original family farmhouse now used by the farm manager.

“Who lives there?” Beth asked.

“Some people who work for Daddy.”

As they stood looking at the house, the front door opened. A woman came out on the porch and waved to them, clearly indicating she wanted them to come up to the house. “Beth, Tina, come on,” Jenny urged. “It looks as though we’re about to meet our first neighbor.”

It seemed to her that the woman stared at them unrelentingly as they walked across the field. Unmindful of the cold day she stood in the doorway, the door wide open behind her. At first Jenny thought from her slight frame and sagging body that she was elderly. But as she got closer, she realized that the woman was no more than in her late fifties. Her brown hair was streaked with gray and twisted high on her head in a carelessly pinned knot. Her rimless glasses magnified sad gray eyes. She wore a long, shapeless sweater over baggy, double-knit slacks. The sweater accentuated her bony shoulders and acute thinness.

Still there were vestiges of prettiness about the face, and the drooping mouth had well-shaped lips. There was a hint of a dimple in her chin, and somehow Jenny visualized this woman younger, more joyous. The woman stared at her as she introduced herself and the girls.

“Just like Erich told me,” the woman said, her voice low and nervous. “‘Rooney,’ he said, ‘wait till you meet Jenny, you’ll think you’re looking at Caroline.’ But he didn’t want me talking about it.” She made a visible effort to calm herself.

Impulsively Jenny held out both her hands. “And Erich has told me about you, Rooney, how long you’ve been here. I understand your husband is the farm manager. I haven’t met him yet.”

The woman ignored that. “You’re from New York City?”

“Yes, I am.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Our daughter Arden is twenty-seven. Clyde said she went to New York. Maybe you met her?” The question was asked with fierce eagerness.

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” Jenny said. “But of course New York is so big. What kind of work does she do? Where does she live?”

“I don’t know. Arden ran away ten years ago. She didn’t have to run away. Could just as easily have said, ‘Ma, I want to go to New York.” I never denied her. Her dad was a bit strict with her. I guess she knew he wouldn’t let her go so young. But she was such a good girl, why she was president of the 4-H club. I didn’t know she wanted to go so bad. I thought she was really happy with us.”

The woman’s gaze was fixed on the wall. She seemed to be in a reverie of her own, as though explaining something she had explained many times before. “She was our only one. We waited a long time for her. She was such a pretty baby, and so wanting, you know what I mean. So active, right from the minute she was born. So I said, let’s call her Arden, short for ardent. It suited her real nice.”

Beth and Tina shrank against Jenny. There was something about this woman, about the staring eyes and slight tremor, that frightened them.

My God, Jenny thought. Her only child and she hasn’t heard from her in ten years. I would go mad.

“See her picture here.” Rooney indicated a framed picture on the wall. “I took that just two weeks before she left.”

Jenny studied the picture of a sturdy, smiling teenager with curly blond hair.

“Maybe she’s married and has babies too,” Rooney said. “I think about that a lot. That’s why when I saw you coming along with the little ones, I thought maybe that’s Arden.”

“I’m sorry,” Jenny said.

“No, it’s all right. And please don’t tell Erich I’ve been talking about Arden again. Clyde said Erich is sick of listening to me always going on about Arden and Caroline. Clyde said that’s why Erich retired me from my job at the house when his dad died. I took real good care of that house, just like my own. Clyde and I came here when John and Caroline were married. Caroline liked the way I did things and even after she died I kept everything just so for her, as though she’d be walking in any minute. But come on in the kitchen. I made doughnuts and the coffeepot’s on.”

Jenny could smell the perking coffee. They sat around the white enamel table in the cheerful kitchen. Hungrily Tina and Beth munched at still-warm powdered doughnuts and drank milk.